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Benutzer Diskussion:Gwyndon/Web of the World
Web of the world. A NaNoWriMo novel in bits and pieces, in figments of imagination as conceived by the dreaming trolls of the True Oracle. Prologue: Onslaught at full moon The siege began at noon, wenn outriders of an otherwise foot-based army circled the border town on the land side, leading to quickly closed and bolted city gates, hastily uttered commands, messengers sent out via the harbour gates and messages sent by bird, some shot down in an instant by the enemy scouts, some far out of reach of their deadly and forcefull crossbows. It was not a new enemy, but still the situation was unusual for the commander of the town, because for years the enemy seemed content to garrison their armies in the castles and towns, and to leave the havoc to the demons roaming the fields of the Great Plains, summoned by the shamans or by lesser demons who had joined forces top conjure up even larger hordes from the nether worlds in between or from the partly demon-posessed inner world of Shanatan. Not since the leader and duke of the land had given up the rule of the country to the self-styled emporer of all the lands of light, taking a rather humble position of vize-roy below him and only after proving himself with a large oversea mission becoming king below the emporer who had nibbled off one of the finest pieces to have a center for his empire of nodding nobodies, not ever since that time had the enemy attacked. Now, obviously, they were attacking. In force and with larger armies than the city could muster in the time left to them before the full army of the enemy, in black shining armour which to the sentries seemed a rather cheap imitation of the famous Black Plates, was at the gates. Only a short time had been spent on the hope, that the travelling wizards, summoners, and conjurers in the town, the elite magical henchmen from the famous wizarding school at the Tharenian Sea, could be of help. They admitted that against such an attack as was imminent, they were utterly useless, while they might have, with sufficient preparation, been able to set up a magical trap to sent home any demonic hordes the plains might spawn in the direction of the town, provided the demonic power was way below the levels of that one big demon who had, in the year of the book, wiped out entire towns at will before being pushed away, not defeated, by the entire cirle of wizards the emporer and the elf-king had been able to muster. So the wizards did what wizards do best when you need them – they tried to disappear as fast and as noiselessly as possible to the town only its enemies call Bretnor, at the river, at the border, near the relative safety the proximity of the old empire could offer. Maybe they would hope to enlist in the services of the man once seen as the next best candidate for a shining aviour of the old empire – had he not been put at the border which was the farthest away from the black empire's old capital, from the nemeis of the old empire, from the lost crown of the last emporer the old empire had known. The ram only knows what he could do, what he could have done with the crown, ten, fifteen years ago, when he still was one of the young hopefulls. Now he was one of those dignitaries those pushing new hopefulls would ask for promotion and consent. Would they ask him, try to use him, or bypass him on their way to the old man, who was still perceived as holding the power in this part of the old empire? He would never know until they got to him – or until his spies, the five eagles, told him... if they survived the onslaught. The onslaught began and was over quite fast. They breached the walls to the town with fire and with a force as unexpected as was their attack. Not days, mere hours later the main units of the enemy army were at the walls at the castle, which gave the town its name and its strength and protection. It took them longer to breach the castle walls, but they made it. Slaughtering all those resisting, they took the weapons of those surrendering, captured them and led them off, to be sold at the markets of Marthog, where traders from Ataris would take them at a neat bundled price for the whole lot. Only those unarmed when found, offering no resistance or showing at least a made-up loyalty to the dark forces, to the deities driven out in the golden times of the old Archon, were left where they were, were enlisted to open doors, show ways and lead to possible pockets of resistance within the castle and the town walls. Weeks later a messenger reached the court of the emporer, when word had already reached the man no longer a mere Vize-Roy but king of the land now under attack, and told his main advisor, Phaedron Dhuras: „Antjal has fallen“.